2017: The Year So Far

To be honest, it feels like I was adrift a stormy sea of my own creation. You see, I’ve made a terribly bad business decision last year and the first part of 2017 was spent trying to get past it. I was utterly destroyed and felt so down and depressed.

I’m just now starting to get out of it and I was in no state to blog or write about my journey because even I didn’t know what the next months could bring. Freelance is tricky and sometimes, one mistake can totally ruin what you are trying to build.

But lessons can be learned in this experience. I never put my eggs in one basket and the one time I did, it almost ruined everything. So kids, never, never put your all lovely, hard-earned, delicate eggs in a basket you did not throughly vet and research. And maybe not even then. It’s always good to play it safe and tread carefully.

I know I’m terrible at word play.

Anyway, I’m getting more optimistic about the coming months. Made some changes in my web design business and starting to get more long-term gigs.

Changes are needed at this point, some major ones include:

SSL is now mandatory for all my future web design builds. Most clients aren’t too fussed about it but I usually explain why it is needed (membership, e-commerce, anything taking payments/personal information) and they usually get on board.

Pricing changes are also in effect. I’ve changed my pricing scale and added bonuses here and there. I’ve also made some promotional packages for basic web design services.

I’ve also delved deeper into themes running on Visual Composer. It’s been quite a ride. Some of the themes work flawlessly and has crazy customization features. Add some advanced CSS and PHP/JS into the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for some pretty awesome pages.

All’s well that ends well.

I’m on my 9th year of freelancing and I’m relearning a lot this year. But whatever, it’s sink or swim – so just keep swimming.